Mira Murati’s deposition pulled back the curtain on Sam Altman’s ouster

The Murati deposition shifts the evidentiary center of gravity in this litigation away from Musk's founding grievances and toward OpenAI's internal decision-making process, specifically who knew what before the board acted in November 2023. That reframing matters because it implicates board competence and process, not just Altman's candor.

This is a direct continuation of the trial coverage Modelwire has tracked since early May. The week-one roundup from The Verge ('Elon Musk had a bad week in court') established that Musk's core claims appeared to be weakening, but the Murati deposition introduces a separate thread: OpenAI's own governance failures as a liability, independent of whether Musk wins or loses. The Shivon Zilis coverage from WIRED around the same period showed how informal information channels shaped board-level decisions, and Murati's testimony adds another data point to that picture. Taken together, the trial is producing a detailed, court-verified record of how OpenAI actually operated during a period the company has preferred to characterize on its own terms.

Watch whether OpenAI's nonprofit-to-for-profit conversion proceedings, currently under California and Delaware regulatory review, draw on any deposition disclosures as grounds for additional scrutiny. If regulators cite the Murati testimony in formal filings before Q3 2026, the governance exposure extends well beyond this lawsuit.